June 12 · This Day in America
Berlin has been cut in two for a generation — a concrete scar with watchtowers, the most literal border on earth between two ways of living. At 2:20 in the afternoon, President Ronald Reagan stands before the Brandenburg Gate with the Wall at his back. His own State Department had tried to cut the line, twice. He keeps it. "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate." Then, plainly: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Few think it possible. Many think it reckless. Twenty-nine months later the Wall comes down, hammered apart by ordinary hands, and people walk freely between the halves of a city for the first time since 1961. Sometimes a sentence is a dare history takes.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1939
Cooperstown, population not much, holds the first induction at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The living members of the inaugural class walk out together: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and others, men who were myths while still breathing. A country in the long shadow of the Depression decided its game deserved a permanent home for memory. People still make the pilgrimage.
Source: www.history.com
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”President Ronald Reagan, 1987